Ariana Losch
Danny Palumbo
Gwynedd Stuart
Picture this: a baking dish layered to the brim with wavy pasta sheets, fresh out of the oven and crisped at the edges, bubbling with cheese and coated in a velvety tomato sauce. The sauce smells like it’s been simmering for hours—except, wait a minute. You just threw this in the oven from the freezer 45 minutes ago! How is that possible?
It may feel like a fantasy, but trust us, the best frozen lasagna can achieve everything that makes homemade lasagna both a culinary masterpiece and beloved comfort food—we have proof!
What we looked for in the best frozen lasagna
Good pasta. Ideally, the sheets of pasta should be tender but not totally bloated. To be honest, that’s not easy to find in frozen lasagna, so you have to sort of lean into the mush factor. There are worse things in the world—believe us.
Multiple layers. A few brands are out here making lasagna sandwiches, with just two sheets of pasta. We prefer a little more height than that!
Tasty, well-distributed ingredients. If you’re making lasagna at home, you’re probably taking great pains to make sure every inch of pasta is slathered with the good stuff—not all grocery store brands are making the same effort. No one wants naked edges! And this might just be an “us” thing, but we favor lasagna made with plenty of ricotta. Quit skimping on the ricotta!
Over the course of three taste tests, we heated a lot of frozen lasagna (and, yes, some refrigerated lasagna, too) to find the good stuff.
- Stouffer’s Vegetable Lasagna
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Do carrot batons and broccoli florets belong in frozen lasagna? Well, if we’re playing it fast and loose and calling Stouffer’s Vegetable Lasagna “lasagna” instead of a creamy casserole (I mean, it even has a breadcrumb topping), then what the hell! Live a little! So, okay, this is barely lasagna, but, dammit, we still kind of love it. The layers of pasta, veggies, and cheese are absolutely drenched in a salty, tasty, parmesan-tinged sauce—it’s extremely decadent for a veg-friendly dish. Sure, the whole thing sort of absorbs the flavor of frozen broccoli, but it’s not a dealbreaker. I couldn’t stop taking bites of this frozen lasagna. —Gwynedd Stuart
Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart
- Beecher’s Gluten Free Cheese Curd Lasagna
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Do cheddar cheese curds belong on lasagna? I’m not totally convinced, but this is the best gluten free lasagna we tried all the same. In fact, it’s better than the non-GF Beecher’s frozen lasagna, which we’d previously ranked but removed from the list because it was disappointing in our most recent taste test. I will say it’s a little bit crazy that “spinach” isn’t mentioned anywhere on the front of the box, because this is spinach lasagna. Like, capital S spinach lasagna. The ricotta filling (which is perfectly salted, I will say) tastes like spinach. It’s at least a third spinach. But we do really like the way the bright, acidic sauce tastes with the cheese curds. It’s also vegetarian, which is nice. Fair warning, GF folks: This is one of those lasagna sandwiches I was talking about with only two layers of pasta. The gluten free pasta they use is genuinely good, though—show it off, Beecher’s! —Gwynedd Stuart
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
- Great Value Five Cheese Lasagna
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Look, I’m an Italian food snob, but there is absolutely a place for something like Great Value Five Cheese Lasagna. It reminds me of Lean Cuisine but better. The sauce is sweet and speckled with dry herbs, which I usually hate, but the lasagna sheets are thick enough to stand up to it. It’s got tang, too! Walmart’s out here balancing flavors—who knew? I’m sure this is definitely an abomination by the standards of a lot of Italian-Americans, but I get the appeal of a Great Value Five Cheese lasagna. The cheese isn’t high quality or anything, but it has that deliciously processed quality to it. There’s something super stonerish about this that I enjoy with my whole heart and I wasn’t alone. Plus, $2.97 for a solo-size lasagna? That’s huge. It’s the best frozen lasagna if you’re looking for a cheap, filling lunch. —Danny Palumbo
Credit: Ryan Martin / Walmart
- Amy’s Kitchen Vegetable Lasagna
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Amy’s Kitchen Vegetable Lasagna was a contender for the best frozen vegetable lasagna on this list, but…well, it’s very lacking in the cheese department. Lasagna needs cheese, Amy. Yes, your sweet basil marinara sauce is very yummy—it’s the saving grace of this lasagna, in fact—but the Sporked team could not look past this critical misstep. I’m a sauce queen myself, and I will bravely go on the record calling this one of the best frozen lasagna brands, but it would definitely rank higher with some tweaks to the recipe. Like doubling the amount of cheese. Possibly tripling. —Ariana Losch
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
- Amy’s Kitchen Gluten Free Dairy Free Vegetable Lasagna
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Coming into this updated ranking, we broadened our search for the best frozen lasagna to include the best gluten free lasagna, and Amy’s Kitchen Gluten Free Vegetable Lasagna is our current frontrunner. Made with organic rice flour, it’s difficult to tell the rice noodles themselves apart from the other wheat pastas on this list. The noodles hold up well even after they’ve been nuked to oblivion (a blunder on my part). Considering this frozen lasagna it’s also dairy-free—something I would not have guessed by flavor alone, mostly because this Amy’s lasagna also lacked cheese—Amy’s Kitchen certainly gets high marks in the sensitive tummy department. The basil-forward, slightly sweet tomato sauce is the best part of this dish, even if the lasagna itself comes out too soupy. Less soup, more fake cheese please! —Ariana Losch
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
- Rao’s Meat Lasagna
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Rao’s frozen lasagna has a few issues, but the main thing we love about it? The sauce, of course. Rao’s makes a mean marinara and that makes up for some of this frozen lasagna’s shortcomings. We also like that they use great ricotta cheese, as well as romano for some extra bite. The lasagna itself is soft, slightly sweet, and creamy in both texture and taste. The top of the lasagna gets nice and browned in the oven, and the sheets of pasta get crispy around the edges. If you think it lacks flavor, some crushed red pepper and a drizzle of good olive oil on top should do the trick. —Danny Palumbo
Credit: Ryan Martin / Target
- On-Cor Lasagna with Meat Sauce
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This frozen lasagna is one of the few that feels like it was made with bechamel (even though it isn’t), that’s how creamy it is. It’s on the sloppier side, so it’s important to let it rest a bit after cooking. The sauce is almost like a vodka sauce. You’ll notice the pink color—it’s from the cheese and red sauce melding together to form one homogenous river of flavor. Seriously, it’s very saucy. It lost some Sporks because it lacks in the meat department and the flavor is a tad bland. My colleague Justine Sterling suggested adding some dried pepper flakes to spice it up. And, again, I would consider a drizzle of olive oil as well. It should also be said that Sporked’s Jordan Myrick went to bat for On-Cor. They go hard in the paint for a lot of sauce, so if you do, too, you’ll love this. —Danny Palumbo
Credit: Ryan Martin / Instacart
- Stouffer’s Meat Lovers Lasagna
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We tried two Stouffer’s meat lasagnas: their Classic Lasagna with Meat & Sauce and this Meat Lovers Lasagna, and I gotta say, this one is dramatically better. The noodles aren’t quite as thick and the sauce, which is thick and tomato paste-y in a highly comforting way, tastes much better than the Classic Lasagna sauce. While my colleague Justine detected some weird gaminess from the various meats (the pepperoni perhaps), we all liked it overall. It’s salty and meaty and filling, which is exactly what you want from the best frozen lasagna. —Gwynedd Stuart
Credit: Liv Averett / Vons
- Kroger Meat Lasagna Party Size
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It’s crazy, but this meat lasagna is actually the best cheesy lasagna. Kroger frozen meat lasagna is made with a very generous helping of low moisture mozzarella. It has a good, hefty cheese pull. The noodles are a bit too thick and there’s not a whole lot of meat to be found, but the flavor made this some of the best frozen lasagna we tasted. A lot of lasagna suffers from blandness, but not Kroger. It has a deep, sharp tomato flavor and there’s plenty of herbs speckled throughout. The sauce tastes a little more homey—like somebody actually made it. Plus, this tray of frozen lasagna is gigantic. I’ve actually never heard of “party size” lasagna before. Are people bringing lasagna to parties? I mean, you do you. —Danny Palumbo
Credit: Ryan Martin / Kroger
- Giovanni Rana Meat Lasagna
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Giovanni Rana understands the art of lasagna. Theirs is tasty, rich, meaty, and cheesy. It looks like homemade lasagna. The mozzarella comes already browned on top, so you get those desirable little pockets of crispy cheese. They also use ricotta (a lot of store-bought lasagna uses cottage cheese), mascarpone, fontina, and cheese sauce. There’s a creamy layer of bechamel here that the others lack. The edges of this lasagna curl up, too, giving it that homemade look and nice crispy edges. The sauce is flavorful if a tad greasy, and there’s a good coating of meat ragu. An important note: Yes, this is on our list of the best frozen lasagna, but this actually comes refrigerated and is meant to be kept in the refrigerator. The downside is that it doesn’t last as long as the frozen varieties (you have to have a plan to eat this sucker), but the upside is that it cooks in no time flat—just eight minutes in the microwave for a family size tray. Rana consistently makes REALLY good refrigerated pasta, and this pre-prepared dish is a perfect showcase for the fresh, delicate sheets. —Danny Palumbo & Gwynedd Stuart
Credit: Ryan Martin / Target
- Trader Joe’s Family Style Meat Lasagna
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Okay, okay, bring out Nonna for this one. Trader Joe’s Family-Style Meat Lasagna would trick any pasta-proud Italian into believing this was homemade. (I’m not saying you should try to sneak one past your grandma—don’t do that. I’m just saying you could if you for some reason you needed to, alright?) The savory beef and pork blend cooks evenly and tastes fresh, like meat from a butcher shop. There’s a lovely layer of ricotta cheese in the middle and a generous amount of marinara sauce, pleasing cheese fiends and sauce queens alike. Since the recipe doesn’t skimp on ingredients, every spoonful has a balanced, layered taste. It’s not trying to be fancy, with seven unique cheeses and a sauce that randomly favors one divisive ingredient. It’s simply trying to be lasagna. Comforting. Filling. And the best frozen lasagna we’ve ever tried. —Ariana Losch
Credit: Liv Averett / Trader Joe’s
Best Not Lasagna
Best Gluten Free Lasagna
Best Value
Best for Sauce Queens
Best Vegan Lasagna
Best for Rao’s Lovers
Best Creamy
Best Veggie
Best Cheesy
Best of the Best
Best Meat Lasagna
Other frozen lasagna we tried
Lean Cuisine Favorites Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Michael Angelo’s Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Signature Select Frozen Lasagna, First Street Vegetable Lasagna, Michael Angelo’s Vegetable Lasagna, Signature Select Frozen Six Veggie Lasagna, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese Gluten Free Cheese Curd Lasagna, Udi’s Gluten Free Italian Sausage Lasagna Frozen Meal, Cedarlane Simply Plant Powered Vegan Lasagna, Sprouts Organic Lasagna With Meat Sauce, Sprouts Organic Four Cheese Lasagna Gluten Free, Marie Callender’s
Jordan Myrick
Naajia Shukri
